
Kalahari Surfers & Greg Hunter
English composer and sound engineer
English composer and sound engineer
In 1998 Robert Trunz had the notion that an album by a group from Cape Town called TransSky (Brendan Jury & Warrick Sony) produced by Greg Hunter would be a good thing. He set about making it happen first getting Greg to Cape Town and booking a couple of weeks time with what was then Shifty Studios. Getting to know and work with Greg through this period was a great education and a privilege for me. I learned a lot about the world of synthesized ORB style sound and frozen ants. This was the first of three work periods with Greg which spanned three years. It was, however, the period where we all did the preliminary recordings which would form the texture of the whole album. Everything was recorded and assembled onto 24-track ADAT system using an old Protools system to edit and loop. All sounds were originated by our performances and those of the special sessions which we hosted at the studio. Brendan had left Cape Town and the project by the time of Greg’s second and third visits which saw the pieces morphing into huge sound epics with sampled and performed merging together processed and squeezed into the ether. Strings and things were developed and added at Milestone. Speakers were blown. Greg left with a box of mixes and we resolved to do a track each separately and release it all as a band called PLINC the album Turntabla. Greg was never entirely happy with many of the tracks and the distance and interest made the project difficult to complete for him, other things cropped up and life overtook us all. Robert approached me towards the end of 2007 and asked if I would revisit it as a Kalahari Surfer and finish it off, which I did. Many of the original pieces had chunks of samples that we could never hope to clear without great expense so I had to strip things out rework, replay and remix. These were sent to Greg who sprang some new mixes into the timeline and gave constructive spiritual guidance. This then is the final putting to bed Turntabla with the last track being a homage to the great intelligence which guides us all. Om purnam ada punam idam
Thanks to Robert Trunz for a decade of patience.
M2KR is ‘MELT 2000 Revisited’!
MELT 2000, with its offshoot ELECTRIC M.E.L.T. remains as one of the most important record labels ever launched in South Africa.
Now, the M2KR team are proud to extend this legacy with a roll-out of remix projects, that honour the eternal excellence of both the artists and their original recordings.